Bullethead Posted February 3, 2000 Share Posted February 3, 2000 I think Stalin's not believing Germany would attack, and then going into total denial for a while after they did, was also a pretty big blunder. ------------------ -Bullethead jtweller@delphi.com WW2 AFV Photos: people.delphi.com/jtweller/tanks/tanks.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Rock Posted February 3, 2000 Share Posted February 3, 2000 Hitler's greatest blunder: dying before his former generals who published memoirs saying how terribly clever they were and how everything that went wrong was all Hitler's fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tss Posted February 3, 2000 Share Posted February 3, 2000 I think that by far the worst military blunder of the war was Stalin's insistence of assigning his old Civil War buddies (Voroshilov, Budjenney, Kulik, Mehklis, Timoshenko, Spashnikov (though I may be confusing him to someone else), and a couple of others that I don't remember now) to the command of Red Army. Of this clique only Spasnikov was a good commander, Timoshenko was adequate, and the rest were terrible. In early thirties Voroshilov fought long and hard against incorporating tanks to Red Army. As late as January 41 Kulik wanted to remove trucks from supply organizations, preferring 18000 men infantry divisions with horse-drawn transports. As a director of artillery, he also stopped the production of 76 mm guns and his main criteria was for gun specifications was that the guns should be "beautiful". Mehklis's incompetence in military affairs was only exceeded by his hatred of army commanders and he was the master-mind who organized the purges. He was also the strongest advocate of the "territorional integrity" strategy that was implemented by stationing all forces (and supply dumps) near frontiers. He was finally relieved of command after wasting 100000 men in Crimea and trying to blame others for it. Usually, the what-if situations concentrate on finding war-winning plans for the Axis side. I think that if someone with any military sense had been organizing Soviet defence, the war would have ended by Autumn 1942 with Soviet tanks rolling to Berlin. - Tommi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EScurlock Posted February 4, 2000 Author Share Posted February 4, 2000 Originally posted by Fionn: EScurlock. Good points and mostly right... Your points are all true, but I don't think Hitler forsaw the need to take the war to British soil at all until June or July '41. As commander and chief it would be his responcibility to see to it that the Navy had an amphibious capability, and invested the resourses to make it a possibility. I don't think the German Navy commisioned the design of a single amphibious landing craft. Admittedly my knowlendge of the German Navy is anecdotal at best. So if I need light shined on this I'd love to hear about it. Although writings I've seen on Hitler's intentions in this area are vague, it's my understanding he expected 1) Britain, and France not to declare war when he invaded Poland, and 2) England to become an Ally against Russia. This complete missread of Britain was the beginning of the end - before things even started, or at least as you've pointed out - under Churchill's leadership. You may have a valid point on the possibility of concessions under different British leadership. Nonetheless the geopolitical shortsidedness of Hitler in this regard reminds me of Germany's interest in getting Mexico into the war durring WWI. He completely missed the boat on this one. ------------------ He who gets there the fastest with the mostest wins. [This message has been edited by EScurlock (edited 02-04-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aacooper Posted February 4, 2000 Share Posted February 4, 2000 One additional U.S. blunder was the Hurtgen (sp?) Forest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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